I’m too sick to keep reading. I shove the phone back in her direction and turn away, blinking back tears. Is it all real? Could Nathaniel really have said the same exact words to Kenzie that he said to me? This must be some kind of prank.
Except when I look at Kenzie’s face, I know it’s not.
She reaches out and takes my hand in hers. “Please, Addie. Please come with me. I don’t want to be the only one.”
With my free hand, I reach into my jeans pocket, where I moved the card that Detective Sprague gave me earlier today. I pull it out to look at the number scrawled on the back. The ink is slightly blurred by the rain, but I can still read every single digit.
“Okay,” I say. “I’ll go.”
OceanofPDF.com
Chapter Seventy-Five
ADDIE
I AM ABSOLUTELY TERRIFIED.
When we came to the police station, they put us in a tiny room that gave me a creepy-crawly claustrophobic feeling in the back of my neck. The lighting is scary dark, and the two plastic chairs look uncomfortable. And when we sit on them, they feel uncomfortable. If I were here alone, I would be terrified.
But I’m not alone. I’m with Kenzie.
I didn’t tell my mother what I was doing. She would have insisted on hiring a lawyer and making it into a whole thing, and then I would’ve lost my nerve. So I told my mother I was going to take a walk with Kenzie, but instead we came here.
But now I think I might have made a mistake. I should have waited for a lawyer. Or maybe just said nothing at all. Kenzie sounded so sure of herself, but it’s not like she’s my best friend. She’s been tormenting me all year! And now somehow I trust her?
Kenzie is obsessively playing with a lock of her blond hair. She’s tugging at it hard enough that I can’t help but wince, and she frowns at the silky blond strands as if angry at them. “My hair is like straw,” she complains.
I look at her in disbelief. Kenzie has the most perfectly silky hair I’ve ever seen. And why is she worrying about her freaking hair when we’re at a police station? “You have beautiful hair.”
She rolls her eyes at me and goes back to making faces at her hair.
I am losing it, waiting for Detective Sprague to talk to us. Maybe she was nice to me on the street, but that could’ve all been a fake out. And what I am going to tell her is bad stuff. Kenzie had an affair with Nathaniel, but what I did is much worse. I helped him bury a dead body. And I’m not even entirely sure which of us was the one who killed her.
It feels like an eternity, but it’s really more like twenty minutes before Detective Sprague comes into the room. She’s still got her hair in that bun, but it has loosened over the course of the day, and that makes her face look softer. I hope she really is on my side. I hope I don’t spend the rest of my life in prison.
I look over at Kenzie, who is still playing with her hair. Very reluctantly, she tucks the strands behind her ear and raises her eyes to look at the detective.
“Hello, Addie,” Sprague says. Then she turns to Kenzie and gives her a curious look. “Kenzie Montgomery?”
Kenzie nods. “I… Addie and I need to talk to you about Nathaniel Bennett.”
Sprague doesn’t look particularly surprised. She sits in one of the plastic chairs across from us and folds her fingers together. “I’m listening,” she says.
Kenzie and I exchange looks. We hadn’t agreed beforehand who would go first. I don’t want to go first, and I guess I assumed Kenzie would since it was her idea to come here.
“Kenzie?” Sprague prompts her.
Kenzie glances at me, panic in her eyes, then looks back at the detective. “Oh. Well, we…we just…”
“Is this about Mr. Bennett?”
Kenzie nods wordlessly.
Sprague’s voice softens. “About your relationship with Mr. Bennett?”
Kenzie bows her head, nodding slowly. The detective is quiet, waiting for Kenzie to say something more, but she seems too choked up to say another word. Even though it was her idea to come here, she doesn’t look like she can go on. She squeezes her knees with her chewed-up fingernails as her eyes fill with tears.
I always thought Kenzie seemed so mature, but right now, she looks so young. Like a little girl. She was only fourteen when Nathaniel slept with her. Fourteen. And Nathaniel…he’s almost forty! He’s an adult. Our teacher. I was hurt when I realized that Nathaniel lied to me, but this is the first time that it all hits home.
What he did to us was truly horrible. Unthinkable.
He needs to pay. And Kenzie and I are the only ones who can make sure he gets what he deserves.